If we judge the conduct of Louis Napoleon by reference only to Napoleon III., we shall not be inclined to condemn it. His rule has not been a perfect one, but it has been the best that France has known for fifty years, not only for the French themselves, but for foreign peoples. He has lifted France out of that slough in which she had floundered under both branches of the Bourbons, and he has done so without being guilty of any act of injustice toward other nations. The greatness of the France of Napoleon I. was unpleasingly associated with the idea of the degradation of neighboring countries, which implied the ultimate fall of the Empire, as it could not be expected that Russians and Germans would be governed from Paris. Independence is what every people strong enough to vindicate its rights will have; and hence the men at St. Petersburg and Vienna and Berlin were certain to act against the men of Paris at the first favorable opportunity that should present itself. Their dependent state was an unnatural state, and when the reaction came, the torrent swept all before it. The fall of Napoleon I. was the consequence of the manner in which he rose to the greatest height ever achieved by a man in modern days. Napoleon III., whose power is really greater than that of his uncle, has incurred the enmity of no foreign people. He has led his armies into no European capital city, and he has levied no foreign contributions. When it was in his power to dictate terms to Russia, he astonished men, and even made them angry, by the extent of his moderation. His abrupt pause in his career of Italian success, no matter what the motive of it, enabled Austria to retire from a war in which she had found nothing but defeat, with the air of a victor. The only additions he has made to the territory of France--Savoy, Nice, and Monaco--were obtained by the fair consent of all those who had any right to be consulted on the changes that were made. We find nothing in his conduct that betrays any desire to humiliate his contemporaries, and a superiority to vulgar ideas of what constitutes triumph that is almost without a parallel. No man was ever treated more insolently by hereditary sovereigns, from Czar and Kaiser and King to petty German princelings; and this insolence he has never repaid in kind, nor sought to repay in any manner. He has foregone occasions for vengeance that legitimate monarchs would have turned to the fullest account for the gratification of their hatred. He has, apparently, none of that vanity which led Napoleon I. to be pleased with having his antechamber full of kings whose hearts were brimful of hatred of their lord and master. If he were to have an Erfurt Congress, it would be as plain and unostentatious an affair as that of his uncle was superficially grand and striking. He seems perpetually to have before his mind's eye what the Greeks called _the envy of the gods_, the divine Nemesis, to which he daily makes sacrifice.